SparkNotes: Henry V: Character List Character List Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Like most of Shakespeare’s plays, Henry V exists in two different early printed versions: the Folio version of 1623 and an earlier Quarto version. There are many differences between the two versions, the most important of which involve the assignment of the speeches of Westmorland, Warwick, the Dauphin, and Bourbon. Additionally, the character called Clarence in the Quarto is called Bedford in the Folio. King Henry V - The young, recently crowned king of England. Henry is brilliant, focused, fearless, and committed to the responsibilities of kingship. These responsibilities often force him to place his personal feelings second to the needs of the crown. Henry is a brilliant orator who uses his skill to justify his claims and to motivate his troops. Once Henry has resolved to conquer France, he pursues his goal relentlessly to the end. Read an in-depth analysis of King Henry V. Chorus - A single character who introduces each of the play’s five acts. Like the group of singers who comprised the chorus in Greek drama, the Chorus in Henry V functions as a narrator offering commentary on the play’s plot and themes.

The Dukes of Exeter, Westmorland, Salisbury, and Warwick - Trusted advisors to King Henry and the leaders of his military. The Duke of Exeter, who is also Henry’s uncle, is entrusted with carrying important messages to the French king. The Dukes of Clarence, Bedford, and Gloucester Henry’s three younger brothers. - Clarence, Bedford, and Gloucester are noblemen and fighters. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely - Wealthy and powerful English clergymen. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely do not go to fight in the war, but their urging and fund-raising are important factors in Henry’s initial decision to invade France. Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey Three conspirators against King Henry. - Cambridge, Scrope, and Grey are bribed by French agents to kill Henry before he sets sail for France. Scrope’s betrayal of his king is particularly surprising, as Scrope and Henry are good friends. York and Suffolk - Two noble cousins who die together at the Battle of Agincourt. The King of France Charles VI. - A capable leader, Charles does not underestimate King Henry, as his son, the Dauphin, does.

Isabel - The queen of France, married to Charles VI. Isabel does not appear until the final scene (V.ii), in which her daughter, Catherine, is betrothed to King Henry. The Dauphin - The son of the king of France and heir to the throne (until Henry takes this privilege from him). The Dauphin is a headstrong and overconfident young man, more inclined to mock the English than to make preparations to fight them. He also mocks Henry, making frequent mention of the king’s irresponsible youth. Catherine - The daughter of the king of France. Catherine is eventually married off to King Henry in order to cement the peace between England and France. She speaks little English. Read an in-depth analysis of Catherine. French noblemen and military leaders - The Constable of France, the Duke of Orléans, the Duke of Britain, the Duke of Bourbon, the Earl of Grandpré, Lord Rambures, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Governor of Harfleur are French noblemen and military leaders. Most of them are killed or captured by the English at the Battle of Agincourt, though the Duke of Burgundy survives to help with the peace negotiations between France and England.

Like the Dauphin, most of these leaders are more interested in making jokes about the English than in taking them seriously as a fighting force, a tendency that leads to the eventual French defeat at Agincourt. Sir Thomas Erpingham - A wise, aged veteran of many wars who serves with Henry’s campaign. Captain Gower - An army captain and a capable fighter who serves with Henry’s campaign. Captain Fluellen, Captain MacMorris, and Captain Jamy - The captains of King Henry’s troops from Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, respectively, all of whom have heavy accents reflecting their countries of origin. Fluellen, a close friend of Captain Gower, is the most prominent of the three. His wordiness provides comic relief, but he is also very likable and is an intelligent leader and strategist. Ancient Pistol - A commoner from London who serves in the war with Henry, and a friend of Nim and Bardolph. Pistol speaks with a blustery and melodramatic poetic diction; he is married to the hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern in London. Bardolph - A commoner from London who serves in the war with Henry, and a friend of Pistol and Nim.

Bardolph is a former friend of King Henry from his wild youth. A thief and a coward, Bardolph is hanged in France for looting from the conquered towns in violation of the king’s order. Nim - A commoner from London who serves in the war with Henry, and a friend of Pistol and Bardolph. Like Bardolph, Nim is hanged in France for looting from the conquered towns. Boy - Formerly in the service of Falstaff, the nameless boy leaves London after his master’s death and goes with Pistol, Nim, and Bardolph to the war in France. The boy is somewhat touchy and embarrassed that his companions are cowardly thieves. Michael Williams, John Bates, and Alexander Court - Common soldiers with whom King Henry, disguised, argues the night before the Battle of Agincourt. Though he argues heatedly with Williams, Henry is generally impressed with these men’s intelligence and courage. Hostess - The keeper of the Boar’s Head Tavern in London. Mistress Quickly, as she is also known, is married to Pistol. We hear news of her death from venereal disease in Act V, scene i.

Sir John Falstaff - The closest friend and mentor of the young Henry, back in his wild days. Falstaff doesn’t actually appear in Henry V, but he is a major figure in the Henry IV plays. He is a jovial and frequently drunken old knight, but his heart is broken when Henry breaks his ties with him after becoming king. We hear news of Falstaff’s offstage death in Act II, scenes i and iii. Alice - The maid of the French princess Catherine. Alice has spent time in England and teaches Catherine some English, though not very well. Montjoy - The French herald, or messenger. Monsieur le Fer - A French soldier and gentleman who is captured by Pistol at the Battle of Agincourt. More Help The theme of England in Henry V from LitCharts | The creators of SparkNotes Appearances Themes and Colors LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Henry V, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Just as Henry V presents a multifaceted perspective on warfare, it also portrays a diverse portrait of England. Throughout the play, England is understood as a royal line, a malleable geography, a multicultural melting pot, and a source of patriotic pride.

Faith in England’s royal line and indignation at France’s attempt to truncate that line spurs the action of the play. Henry V goes to war, he believes, to claim a monarchic right over France inherited from his great-uncle Edward III. Though King Charles and the Dauphin deny that claim, the French are nevertheless intimidated by England’s royal line. Henry comes from “victorious stock,” King Charles reminds his son. A sense of that stock stands stronger in the English mind than any sense of national geography. England’s borders are permeable. Henry goes to war to extend them and thinks, in going, that the Scottish will inevitably try and push them back. With England’s lands in constant flux, the English place more weight on national character than on geography, taking pride in the “lions” of Henry’s blood and striving for honor and courage. Indeed, even the French acknowledge that English toughness and bravery seem at odds with the damp, dull, murky landscapes of England. While the play celebrates royal lineage, it also celebrates the diverse lineage of common Englishman by incorporating characters from a wide variety of backgrounds and English subcultures.

Characters hail from every class and from many different cultures: Henry V and Captain Fluellen are Welsh, Captain MacMorris is Irish, and Captain Jamy is Scottish. Though the captains’ heavy accents identify their backgrounds, their high ranks in the army prove that those backgrounds haven’t biased English society against them. In fact, Captain Gower (who is English) chastises Pistol for failing to show Fluellen’s Welsh heritage due tolerance. Perhaps most crucially, England is a source of patriotic pride and a rousing cause to fight for. Henry’s inspirational speeches to his troops before the battles of Harfleur and Agincourt understand this fact and convince English soldiers to forget exhaustion, illness, and fear for the sake of England, uniting army members of every stripe in their common identity as honorable citizens of England, a “band of brothers” embracing any brave Englishman from the lowliest soldier to King Henry V himself. England ThemeTracker The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of England appears in each scene of Henry V. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis. How often theme appears: SCENE VII. Another part of the field. SCENE VII. Another part of the field.

Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER Henry V Act 3 Summary and Analysis | GradeSaver Act Three, Chorus The chorus describes Henry's army boarding the ships that take the soldiers to Harfleur. They also mention that King Charles has made Henry an offer. Charles offers his daughter Catherine in marriage and will give some unprofitable dukedoms as part of the dowry. Henry does not like the offer, and chooses instead to go to war. Act Three, Scene One The scene opens in the middle of a battle to capture Harfleur. Henry says, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, / Or close the wall up with our English dead" (3.1.1-2). Henry proceeds to order his men to not dishonor their glorious forefathers. He motivates his men by telling them to teach the French how to really fight, thereby rallying his men to war and victory. Act Three, Scene Two Bardolph enters crying, "On, on, on, on! To the breach, to the breach!" (3.2.1). Nim and Pistol tell him that the fighting is too hot there and that they would rather stay alive.

The Welsh captain, Fluellen, sees them standing still and starts to beat them while shouting at them to continue moving. When Nim makes a sarcastic remark, Fluellen starts to beat him until he and the others leave. The Boy , who formerly served Falstaff, remains behind and comments that he must find a new set of masters other than the three thieves for whom he has no respect. Act Three, Scene Three Captain Fluellen and Captain Gower , representing Wales and England respectively, discuss the tunnels which are being dug to undermine the fortress at Harfleur. Fluellen tells Gower that Captain MacMorris , who is in charge of building the tunnels, is an ass who will get them all blown up because he is allowing the enemy to build counter-tunnels four feet below his tunnels. Captain MacMorris (from Ireland) and Captain Jamy (from Scotland) arrive. Fluellen remarks that Jamy is a marvelous man whose war tactics he respects. MacMorris tells them that the diggers were forced to quit and that he is upset because in one more hour he would have blown up the town. Fluellen offers him some advice on warfare, but mistakenly refers to MacMorris' "nation".

He is corrected by the Irishman, who says, "Of my nation? What ish my nation?...Who talks of my nation?" (3.3.59). Fluellen wants to show the Irishman that he fully understands the disciplines of war, but MacMorris does not want to be taught by the Welshman. The town of Harfleur sounds a parley, a signal that they want to negotiate. Henry tells them it had better be the last negotiation, or he will destroy the town. He tells the governor that he will allow his men to rape the daughters, smash the heads of the fathers, and spit the infants on pikes unless there is an immediate surrender. The governor informs him that the Dauphin is unable to come to the town's defense, and that therefore he will yield the town to Henry's mercy. The gates are opened, and Henry instantly orders Exeter fortify the town against the French. Act Three, Scene Four The princess Catherine, the daughter of Charles, asks an older gentlewoman named Alice to teach her English. The entire scene is done in French, and Catherine learns the words for hand, finger, nails, foot, arm, chin, and elbow.

Catherine learns the words well enough to repeat them at the end of the lesson before going to dinner. Act Three, Scene Five King Charles is upset that Henry is advancing so rapidly through France. The noblemen and the Dauphin are shocked at the fighting ability of the British, and remark that unless Henry's troops are stopped, they will be forced to work and dance like the English. They further complain that Henry is being honored by the French women for being more valiant than their own men. Charles orders his nobles to rally every man and take their army against Henry. The Constable remarks that Henry's army is fewer in number and that many of his men are sick and famished, and therefore Charles should easily win the battle. Charles lastly orders his son the Dauphin to remain with him in Rouen rather than go to battle. Act Three, Scene Six Fluellen tells Gower that he has seen Exeter valiantly defending the bridge so that Henry's troops can cross over. He then adds that Exeter has an ensign lieutenant with him named Pistol whom he also thinks is a great soldier. Gower says he does not know who Pistol is, but Pistol arrives at that moment.

Pistol asks Fluellen to intercede with Exeter and free Bardolph, who has stolen a religious tablet and is set to hang for his crime. Fluellen refuses, saying he would maintain the discipline even if Bardolph were his brother. Pistol curses him and makes a rude gesture before storming away. Gower tells Fluellen that he now recognizes Pistol as a common thief, and tells Fluellen to not be deceived by the man. King Harry arrives, and Fluellen tells him that Exeter manages to win the bridge without losing a single man, other than Bardolph whom he ordered executed. Henry agrees with the execution, and tells Fluellen that if any other men are caught stealing, the same sentence should apply to them. He remarks that in war it is the gentler of the armies that emerges triumphant in the end. Montjoy arrives from King Charles and tells King Henry that France has merely been sleeping, but now the full force of the French army will fight with him. He orders Henry to depart from France. He further demands that King Charles be fully compensated for the damages Henry has done to Harfleur, and lastly wants Henry to beg mercy from Charles.

Henry tells Montjoy that although his army is weak with sickness, he will continue marching into France and will have to be defeated in battle. He then tips Montjoy. Act Three, Scene Seven The French nobles are organizing near Agincourt, and Bourbon (or alternatively the Dauphin in the First Folio), the Constable, Rambures, and Orleans discuss their horses. Bourbon (or the Dauphin) remarks that he would not change his horse for anything, and tells the other men that he even wrote a sonnet to the horse once. He starts telling them the sonnet, saying, "Wonder of nature!" (3.7.36-37). Orleans interrupts him and comments that the sonnet sounds like it is for a lover, not a horse. "I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress" (3.7.38). Bourbon (or the Dauphin) and the Constable continue talking, making sexual innuendoes concerning horses and mistresses. Bourbon (or the Dauphin) finally leaves to go arm himself. The Constable and Orleans comment on how they wish it were morning so they could defeat the English army.

A messenger arrives and tells the men that the English army is only fifteen hundred paces away that night. They both comment that the English are probably not enjoying the night or anticipating the morning's battle the way they are. Both noblemen are convinced they will have no trouble defeating the English the next morning. Analysis The issue of inheritance is complicated in this play not only by the issue of Salic law (see Act One) but also by the fact that battle can alter whose claim is more valid. Inheritance is therefore not passive the way it should be, but actively fought over. War and bloodshed is a means of clarifying inheritance, where the victor can lay a stronger claim. Henry certainly manages to do this when he defeats Charles and debars the Dauphin from assuming the throne. The issue of inheritance is also tied up with fathers and sons. In the play, fathers are figures whom sons must emulate, often in the form of valour on the battlefield.

Henry calls on the sons of England to duplicate their fathers' exploits or fall short and fail: BLOCKQUOTEOn, on, you noblest English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof, Fathers that like so many Alexanders Have in these parts from morn till even fought, And sheathed their swords for lack of argument. Dishonor not your mothers; now attest That those whom you called fathers did beget you" (3.1.17-23)] The sons must emulate the fathers not only to avoid dishonor, but more generally to avoid losing their inheritance rights. The issue of inheritance really becomes one of keeping families together.

Henry makes this clear at Harfleur, where he tells the governor that he will destroy the family affinity, ruin paternal patterns, and dishonor all the mothers: why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls; Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen. (3.3.110-118) As surprising as it is to describe his own men as rapists and murderers, Henry brilliantly makes the potential victims members of families, such as daughters, fathers, mothers, and infants. This heightens the impact of the violence to such a degree that the governor yields the town without a fight. It also makes it clear that what Henry is really threatening to destroy is the entire inheritance structure of the town, without which Harfleur loses its entire identity. This connection between family and inheritance underlies the reason why Henry refuses to marry Catherine the first time Charles offers her to him.

Henry does not only need Catherine as his wife, he also needs the assurance that Charles will make him his heir. Issuance of blame comes up again when Henry tries to make the governor of Harfleur accept responsibility for the rape and pillage he will allow his troops to pursue. The governor of Harfleur yields the town, begging for mercy as he does so. However, although Henry still refuses to take responsibility for his actions, he cannot escape the judgment of his troops. As will be seen in Act Four, they blame him for leaving behind widows and fatherless children. Indeed, it is wrong to assume that only the French face disruption of their families. The Constable makes clear, "His [Henry's] soldiers sick and famished in their march, / For I am sure when he shall see our army / He'll drop his heart into the sink of fear" (3.5.57-59). Henry is not just lightly marching through France, he is struggling to keep together a suffering army as well. The losses Henry deals with are largely due to sickness and starvation.

Henry states, "My people are with sickness much enfeebled, / My numbers lessened, and those few I have / Almost no better than so many French" (3.6.131-133). However, given that Henry speaks these lines to the French Herald , it is probable that he is exaggerating to give the French a false sense of confidence. The heterogeneous nature of the army is firmly established in Act Three. There are four officers with four accents, English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh. The unity of the men rests on their allegiance to Henry. Indeed, when Fluellen refers to MacMorris' "nation," he is corrected by the Irishman, who says, "Of my nation? What ish my nation?...Who talks of my nation?" (3.3.59). This cohesion among that disparate regions is something only Henry has managed and is what his father battled for most of his reign. In Act Three, Scene Four we are introduced to Catherine. This scene, largely a comedy, also serves to seriously foreshadow two results. By learning the English language, Catherine foreshadows defeat for her father and shows that she must get used to a foreign tongue.

However, she also indicates a union of the two languages and kingdoms by virtue of her willingness to use English words. One of the more interesting comparisons is between the Dauphin and Hotspur, Henry's enemy in Henry IV, Part I. The Dauphin writes a sonnet to his horse (this is only in the First Folio, other texts substitute Bourbon for the Dauphin). In writing the sonnet he reenacts Hotspur who said his roan shall be his throne. The Dauphin can in many ways be said to be embody the worst aspects of Hotspur: his overbearing confidence, his love of horses, and his lack of leadership ability. This stands in contrast to Henry who will later be seen as a modern version of Hotspur by getting the consent of his troops and wishing for more honor by having fewer men. Henry V Essay - Fluellen's Name - eNotes.com Fluellen's Name link Link Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University In Kenneth Branagh's film version of Henry V, a special emphasis is placed on Ian Holm's Fluellen.

When Branagh's Henry, physically and spiritually exhausted, is struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of the battle of Agincourt, it is only the Welshman's well-meaning but apparently oddly timed eulogy of his country that can penetrate his defences and wrest from him the emotional relief of tears. The ensuing moment of bonding becomes one of the most powerful moments in the film, as Fluellen affords his king a vehicle for the expression of celebration. In making such a cinematographic choice, Branagh has undoubtedly responded to an element already strongly present in the text: unfailingly loyal, unwittingly deputizing for him in the matter of Williams, Fluellen obviously does provide a strong psychological prop for the war-wearied king to lean on. I want to argue, however, that he does so also in ways less obvious than this, which are bound up in the matter of his name. Fluellen's name is, as everyone knows, a nonsense, a roughly phonetic rendition of the actual Welsh name Llywelyn.

The Welsh double 11 is notoriously hard for nonnative speakers to pronounce; it was on roughly the same basis as Shakespeare's principles of phoneticization that the Welsh surname Llwyd (meaning grey) became anglicized initially to Floyd, before finally ending up as Lloyd. (Jane Austen's friend Martha, now known universally as Martha Lloyd, is invariably "Floyd" in Austen's letters). Given this, Shakespeare's rendering of Llywelyn as Fluellen is not in itself unreasonable; but the problem could of course have been averted altogether had he adopted the simple expedient of choosing another name, one easier for the English to pronounce (others of his Welshmen include the much more manageable Hugh, Owen, and Davy). That he did choose Llywelyn makes his Welsh captain a highly resonant figure, for Llywelyn was the name of the last Welsh Prince of Wales, Llywelyn yr Olaf (the Last), and also of his grandfather, Llywelyn Fawr (the Great).

It may seem strange that a tetralogy which overtly condemns one Welsh rebel against the English crown, in the shape of Glendower, should thus covertly celebrate another; but then the entire teleology of the second tetralogy points it inevitably towards the culmination of the first, and the apotheosis of the Welsh Henry Tudor, whose mythology drew extensively on traditions of Welsh revivalism.1 But if Fluellen's name is readily comprehensible as Llywelyn, there is another respect in which it is far more alien to traditions of Welsh nomenclature. No Welshman could have a one-word name; an essential part of his identity would be the patronymic, comprising "ap" (son of) and the name of his father.

(For a woman the equivalent would be "ferch," daughter of.) Indeed, few Welshmen of any status would be satisfied with just one indicator of lineage: the majority would append also the name of their paternal grandfather, and quite possible their great-grandfather as well, in ways that utterly frustrated English attempts to make conventional surnames for them—indeed the very name of Tudor was plucked more or less at random from Owen Tudor's full customary style of Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur.2 There is ample evidence that Elizabethan dramatists were fully cognizant of this naming system. From Marlowe's Rice ap Howell with his Welsh hooks,3 to John Ford's Rice ap Thomas in Perkin Warbeck, there is consistent practice; there is even an extended joke on the subject, in Ford and Dekker's The Welsh Embassador, where an Englishman is impersonating a Welshman, and, when, asked his name, replies, "Tis Reese ap meridith, ap shon, ap lewellin, ap morris, yet noe dancers."4 Yet Shakespeare, who undoubtedly knew Welshmen personally, chooses to omit the crucial patronymic. Why?

Paternal authority is of course a recurring theme of the second tetralogy. Henry IV, whose father was not king before him, struggles to enforce his control over the kingdom and has a continuously difficult relationship with his own son; at one stage he is driven to wish for that terror of all patrilineal societies, that his heir was a changeling and Hotspur his natural child. The young Hal quests through the first two plays in which he features performing a series of complex psychological substitutions in which the mantle of his 'father' is in a constant process of circulation between Henry IV, Falstaff, Hotspur, Blunt (literally), and the Lord Chief Justice; even the apparently self-sufficient Henry V places heavy reliance on the only visibly surviving member of the older generation, his uncle Exeter (one of the products of John of Gaunt's irregular relationship with Katherine Swynford, from which the Tudors also descended), and he invokes Richard II immediately before the crucial battle. His father's biographer Marie Louise Bruce sees the same kind of dislocation as that represented by the displaced fathers of Shakespeare's play in the relationship of the historical Henry V to Richard II, whom, she says, he "had never ceased to love . . .

more than his own father";5 it is interesting to note that, in a bizarre exchange of women, his eventual marriage with Katherine of Valois made him the posthumous brother-in-law of Richard II, whose second wife, Isabella of France, had been Katherine's elder sister, and herself originally been intended by the English as subsequently Henry's bride, had she not put up a strenuous resistance.6 All mention of his mother, Mary Bohun, or his more flamboyant stepmother Joanna of Navarre, accused of witchcraft by his younger brother John of Bedford, is studiously avoided; family psychodramas are played out exclusively amongst men. Patriarchy, in these plays, both validates and problematizes the society it structures. The name of the father legitimates succession to the throne of England and allows for the successful transformation of Hal at the close of 2 Henry IV; but his story does not end there, for the opening of Henry V itself shows him in a situation precisely inverting that triumphant succession by presenting him as a candidate for the crown of France, England's other, where authority can be claimed only through right of the female.

Henry's assertion of his right to France depends on his descent from Isabella, mother of Edward III, who was the daughter of Philip the Fair, and a character with whom Shakespeare and his audience would have been familiar from her appearance in Marlowe's Edward the Second. When her three brothers died without male issue, Edward, her son, laid claim to his grandfather's crown, and his son Edward the Black Prince led the English nobility to a series of spectacular victories, such as Crécy and Poitiers, which are referred to with fear by the French nobles of Henry V. However, the claim through Isabella opened up several alarming issues. As a wife who murdered her husband, Edward II, she provided all too clear an example of the dangers of women in charge; moreover, her three brothers, although they had no surviving sons, did all have daughters, whose claim was at least as good as hers. Particularly strong, in theory, would have been the position of Jeanne of Navarre, daughter of Isabella's eldest brother Louis X, had not the little girl been widely believed to be a bastard because of the confessed adultery of her mother, Marguerite of Burgundy.

This issue of female fidelity is of course at the heart of French attempts to impose the Salic law: ... the land Salic is in Germany. Between the floods of Saale and of Elbe, Where, Charles the Great having subdued the Saxons, There left behind and settled certain French Who, holding in disdain the German women For some dishonest manners of their life, Established there this law: to wit, no female Should be inheritrix in Salic land. 7 "For some dishonest manners of their life" is surely fairly clear code for unchastity; but of course the remedy will do little to help, for barring women from the succession cannot secure the legitimacy of their offspring (indeed it is only in a matrilinear society, or through DNA testing, that the transfer of power from ruler to biological heir can ever be assured).

The potential slur on Henry V's own claim through the female is apparently nicely distanced by having the opprobrium directed at German women alone, but in reality it is difficult to keep it quite so much at arm's length: Henry's own wicked stepmother, Joanna of Navarre, was the grand-daughter of the very Jeanne of Navarre whose alleged bastardy had precipitated the Hundred Years' War. Indeed, Henry's own wife would contract a liaison of unsubstantiated legitimacy after his death (from which sprang the Tudors) and the first tetralogy is fissured by accusations of adultery ranging from those against Henry VI' s wife Margaret to Richard Ill's indictment of his own mother's honor in a desperate attempt to impugn the legitimacy of his elder brother Edward. In this patrilinear society, every family bears the scars of the actual or possible disruption of the father-son chain. It is from precisely these uncertainties that Fluellen's name offers a respite. Conspicuously lacking the patronymic, he stands almost alone in the plays in not being identified primarily in terms of his father.

Falstaff, whose own name is of course similarly falsified from its original of Oldcastle, can be read as a parallel to him in this instance; but Falstaff, as the possible pun false-staff perhaps implies, is constantly engaged in usurping the role of Hal's father which Fluellen never does (and has, moreover, been read by recent feminist criticism as a representation of the maternal rather than of the paternal body).8 It is perhaps this absence of patrilinear determinants in Fluellen which makes him an enabling mechanism for Henry to claim, however briefly, what is at once the most glorious and the most spurious of his identities, that of the agent of the Welsh revival. Fleetingly gesturing towards Henry VII' s position as the son of prophecy, the heir of Arthur, Henry agrees that he wears the leek "for a memorable honour. / For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman" (4.7.99-100), with which Fluellen concurs: "All the water in Wye cannot wash your majesty's Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that" (4.7.101-2).

Fluellen's reference to Wye points us squarely in the geographical direction of the origins of Henry's claim to be Welsh: he was born in the gatehouse tower of Monmouth Castle, to that most occluded of figures, Mary Bohun, his mother, whose substantial appanage of Hereford lordships and whose Marcher descent provided him with everything that he is able to claim of this identity, and whose inheritance (together with that of his stepmother, who seems indeed to have been imprisoned expressly to facilitate the release of the money tied up in paying her dower) historically provided the only means by which, in a war-torn country, he could finance taking a wife.9 The memory of Mary Bohun may be only indirectly invoked at this point, but the reference to Henry's birth means that it is inescapably there; and fittingly enough, it is the fatherless Fluellen who has provided a conduit for this return of the repressed mother. After this éclaircissement, Henry will move on to a remarkable refocusing of his energies and interests to direct his attention fully towards the Princess Katherine.

Women will feature in his story in a way they never have before—wenching is notably one of the few pastimes he does not try in Cheapside—and marriage is pulled rather unexpectedly out of the generic hat to make this the only one of the history plays to have a classically comedic teleology. In Branagh's film version, the courtship scene is played for all the numerous laughs it can get, and the last is won when Henry breaks off his ardent wooing with a conscious "Here comes your father" (5.2.270-1). This final appearance of a father in the plays, however, brings with it shades not only of comedy, but of the more repressive and disruptive elements of patriarchy, and also of the threats to it. It is, as the epilogue reminds us, in his role as a father that Henry will register his one significant failure: his weak-minded only son will destabilize England and take it, in circular motion, through all the horrors of the first tetralogy, where French might (mediated, noticeably, primarily through French women) is once again rampant.

Moreover, although the entrance into matrimony may look like an achievement of full adulthood which makes redundant the power of the father, it is actually fundamentally conditioned by it. However much his badinage may attempt to disguise it, Henry's interest in Katherine is of course solely dictated by the identity of her father: as daughter of the King of France, she can help to reinforce his own claim to the throne. Her Frenchness here may, in this respect, even paradoxically underline his own Welsh resonances: as a claimant in his own right who nevertheless seeks the additional support of marriage with the daughter of a previous king, he again directly parallels Henry VII in the marriage with Elizabeth of York which provided the conclusion of the first tetralogy as this does of the second. But the missing element of Fluellen's name may help us to detect an element similarly missing from Katherine' s. Her sister, wife of Richard II, had been Isabella of France; she herself is known to history universally as Katherine of Valois, signifying the intervening decline in fortune of her family which causes them to cease to be synonymous with the country they so temporarily rule.

As well as strengthening Henry's claim to the throne, therefore, she also, paradoxically, weakens it, firstly through this silent change of title which makes her so much less than her sister had been to Richard II, and secondly by the simple fact that to concede that it needs strengthening is to concede that it is not already sufficient. To complicate the situation still further, there was historically some room for doubt that the King of France was Katherine's father, because of the very strong suspicion that her mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, had committed adultery with her brother-in-law, Louis of Orléans;10 indeed Queen Isabeau herself gave force to these rumors when she subscribed to the Treaty of Troyes, which disinherited the Dauphin and referred to him as "the so-called Dauphin."11 Certainly the point may well be hinted at for an audience by the fact that the Dauphin, whose actions initiated events and who has been given such prominence throughout the play, has disappeared so abruptly from the story; and that earlier pointed reference to the "dishonest manners of . . .

life" of German women (I.2.49) may also be recalled by anyone who happens to remember "Queen Isabel's" nationality (though Shakespeare could hardly afford to be too pointed here, since Isabeau, through Katherine of Valois's second marriage to Owen Tudor, was an ancestress of Elizabeth I). "Here comes your father" thus implicitly interpellates Charles VI firmly as being in fact Katherine's father, and also carries a hidden agenda of its own, since what Henry wants is actually for Charles VI to function in effect as his own father, whose legitimate heir and successor he will be. A record of a life which started with a father wishing for a change of sons thus ends, ironically, with a son wishing for a change of fathers. The problematics of patriarchy thus played out are negated, exceptionally and briefly, only in Fluellen, the last of Henry's spiritual fathers, who proffers to him a link with the mythical glories of the Welsh past, and, through it, an even more extraordinary connection to that ultimate warrior, Alexander the Great.

And yet even in the company of the fatherless Fluellen one can never be totally safe from fathers, since just as memories of the forgotten Mary Bohun struggle to the surface in Fluellen's conversation, so too do those of that discarded father figure, Falstaff: As Alexander killed his friend Cleitus, being in his ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his good judgements, turned away the fat knight with the great-belly doublet—he was full of jests and gipes and knaveries and mocks—I have forgot his name. (4.7.40-5) But though the memory of the father may linger here, the name of the father at least has no power, for Fluellen, though his memory stretches back to tales of Alexander the Great and Cadwaladr, has, fittingly, forgotten it. Notes 1 David Rees, The Son of Prophecy: Henry Tudor's Road to Bosworth (London: The Black Raven Press, 1985), 98-110. 2 Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S.

Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1987), 31. 3 Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, edited by Charles R. Forker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), II. vii. 45 s.d. 4The Welsh Embassador, in Fredson Bowers, ed., The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), III. ii. 348. 5 Marie Louise Bruce, The Usurper King: Henry of Bolingbroke 1366-1399 (London: The Rubicon Press, n.d.), 248. 6 Anne Crawford, Letters of the Queens of England 1100-1547 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1994), 107. 7 William Shakespeare, Henry V, edited by Gary Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), I. 2. 44-51. All further quotations from the play will be from this edition.

8 See for instance Valerie Traub, Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (London: Routledge, 1992), 55-56. 9 Crawford, Letters, pp. 112-13. 10 For an account of how Henry V and his supporters used this rumor, see Marina Warner, Joan of Arc (1981) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), 73; for an extended but coyer discussion of Isabeau's adultery (which credits her with other lovers too) see Peter Earle, The Life and Times of Henry V (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 182-83). Warner also discusses the suggestion that it was Joan's reassurance of Charles VII that he was legitimate which was the ground of the king's faith in her; this idea originates in the sixteenth century and would, if Shakespeare were aware of it, have fed interestingly into the series of echoes of the first tetralogy which disrupt the closure of the second. 11 Warner, Joan of Arc, 73.

Source: "Fluellen's Name," in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. XXIV, 1996, pp. 148-55. Start Free Trial Start your free trial with eNotes to access more than 30,000 study guides. Get help with any book.

Question: What is the name of the Welsh captain in Henry V?
Answer: Fluellen